In the sense: if a person, group or nation is succesful or powerful, is it more likely they are doing something good (both in the sense of morally good and rationally efficient) or more likely they are ruthlessly cruel and efficiently oppressing and robbing others, thereby gaining an advantage over others?

For example: well-to-do first-world nations who had a former colonial empire vs. third-world corrupted, poor, crime-ridden "hellholes" who were former colonies. If we would make the assumption that their problems are caused by colonialism itself, it seems a bad culture maanged to conquer and opppress an OK one, i.e. leading to an unjust world assumption that worse cultures are more succesful because more ruthlessly exploiting and conquering. If we assume a generally just world instead, we would have to say these third-world cultures were already bad, hence weak, and easily colonialized, hence the colonializers did them favor, teaching them a better culture. Which one is more likely?

Let's focus on the principle and methodology, not the examples. How would you even begin, by what method, to reason about how just or unjust the world is?

Really? That would be the weirdest position. People could argue that helpful people receive more help from others and do not make enemies, thus helps their success, or they could argue the world is tough and only the ruthless get ahead. But for neither to make a difference...

If I were to ask "do you think that people whose names have an even number of letters in them do better in life than those with odd numbers?" I can only assume you'd say "no - it wouldn't make a difference".

And for good reason. There is no mechanism that would make one cause the other (or for them both to be caused by a third variable).

There's no natural mechanism because the "laws of nature" don't really recognize the amount of letters in a name. And there doesn't seem to be a man-made mechanism either.

But there's man-made mechanisms, right? Sort of. There isn't for nations (the UN is an attempt at this, but it is rather weak and recent).

Is there "justice" mechanisms for individuals in society?

Well, some immoral acts are illegal - those that commit them are likely to be punished. But that supposes that criminals cannot assess risk. Immoral people may only act immorally when they think they will not get caught. If so, reward should outweigh risk (and, if there are enough immoral people, profitable immoral opportunities should become scarce and they should equalise, etc.)

What about in the opposite direction? Well, there are also charitable acts that can reward the doer, but I would imagine that those would be rare. Most of the time, when you give 20 euro to cancer research, the only effect on you is that you lose 20 euro. There are some mechanisms to reward do-gooders, but these are rare - if you were to randomly commit good acts, you would make an overall personal loss.

TL;DR - The universe doesn't reward moral actions because it doesn't recognize them as a category. We may as well ask whether verbs beginning with "a" are more likely to yield good result than verbs starting with "b" - if there is a correlation, it will be accidental. Laws influence behavior, but not the innate morality of those behaving.

The case for the "just world" was made as early as Plato. Basically, both for a person and nation, if you are a huge asshole, you make a lot of enemies, they team up on you, and you are finished. If you play nice, others will be allied with you, they will be helpful when you the most need it, hence nice behavior gets you ahead.

A case for the unjust world would be harder to make, as I am much more leaning towards a just world. If I wanted to make it, I would probably argue for the effectiveness of back-stabbing at the right point of time. Ever played Risk or Diplomacy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)

Let's change the question slightly for a second - does acting in such a way that other people like you correlate with success?

Almost definitely. And, the amount will be in proportion to how powerful those other people are. For example - having the local dictator like you is a huge blessing, having the local blind, mute cripple like you is likely to be less advantageous.

So, doing things that make powerful people like you will be advantageous in proportion to how powerful those people are.

I'm not sure what ethical system you had in mind when asking the question, but I'm sure you can imagine immoral people doing things that please the powerful and moral people doing things to offend them.

Being the kind of habitual asshole who pisses off everybody, including powerful people, would be bad news.

Being the kind of clever Machiavellian who pleases powerful people and exploits the rest would be a succesful strategy, unless powerful people are actually moral and it pisses them off. Which gets us back to the original question, because in a more just world it would be more likely that powerful people are mral, in a more unjust world it would be not. So we cannot determine it without determining the actual question.

I did not have a fixed ethical system in mind. What I am trying to do is to see some very broad theory just to determine which "first instincts" are better or worse. How we should relate to a conflict where we don't really know who is in the right, we only know there is a power difference etc. How should we initially feel if we see rich people supporting a political movement. How should we feel about civilizational conflicts. How should we feel about general history. Just a general framework.

I would only add at this point that, if your ethical system was consequentialist, then these concerns might not be so important.

The course of action we 'should' take would have little to do with whose good or evil, but rather on what the expected outcomes may be (possibly including who remains good or evil - for example, it would be acceptable to support the evil country if the end result was that the morality of both countries improved.) First instinct would reflect these intended outcomes, etc.

How we should relate to a conflict where we don't really know who is in the right, we only know there is a power difference etc.

An unbiased observer will always be unable to determine who is acting justly in any given realistic scenario because the opposing parties will feel individually justified. There necessarily can't be a party that is fundamentally acting more justly than the other if either party can argue to themselves that their actions are just.

This is seen all the time in politics. One individual will argue that regulation protects people from oppression, another will argue that regulation enables oppression of people. A third individual might see an opportunity to argue that sometimes regulation protects from oppression and sometimes it enables oppression.

Without tons of additional information, all three perspectives have equal claim on who is just in the conflict. I don't even think a broad theory is really possible. There are too many variables.

If you held a gun to my head, I'd say maybe start with reciprocal altruism though.

I see no reason to think that the moral goodness of a person has any correlation (positive or negative) with their success in life.

Ya there is.

The person who has more control over the elements has better teamwork, a better understanding of process and so less personal and mental barriers (denial/delusions) to real circumstances, and is overall assumed to be "realer" or more intelligent for it. On the other hand, there is a difference between massive and sudden, temporal gain that only looks effective (robbing a bank) versus long term building and gaining (opening a bank). Both the bank president and bank robber understand something very real about profit and the circumstances, but only one can project that past the moment and into the future.

Problem is you do not understand the concept of morality. Generosity or altruism is not morality, morality is a choice you make when during the war you are hiding with a group of people from enemy solders and you have a crying baby in your group, and when you think whether to strangle the baby so you are not found or to let them find you, in which case the baby will probably survive but you not, is what morality is. If you are younger than 25 you will understand it later, since the part of the brain that is responsible for this develops till 25 years.

Calm down, I just gave you an example of moral judgement. The part responsible for morality (among many other things) is frontal cortex and it develops till age 25. And I don't understand how philosophers are relevant to neuroscience, more specifically, brain physiology?

There are almost no moral theorists that agree with you that altruism is not a topic covered by morals. You've done nothing to argue against me than to say that I'm wrong and too young to be right.

It is you that don't understand morals. I know that degrees are ultimately just a piece of paper, but to claim that I know nothing of morality because I'm under 25 when I wrote a thesis on the subject is ridiculous.

you see no reason to think that the morals have effect on success

I don't. Which was what the question asked. You can't conclude that my argument is wrong because I came to a different conclusion than you.

Ok, consider an individual, who is seen by others as rightful or moral and individual who is considered as cheating against others. Now consider with whom you would like to have business more, the one who has a good reputation or the one who is known steal stuff from others when they are not looking? This is a common sense, this is why humans have a sense for this below conscious level, and this is where moral people have advantage over not moral. Of course, the are cases where "being an ass" makes you the most successful. This is known as the Tragedy of Commons in The Game Theory. It happens when individuals meet each other once and are sure they will not meet them again, then the most optimum solution is to always cheat. But as soon as it is not known how much times more you will have to face the individual the optimum solution becomes what is essentially known as being moral, especially when you add the ability of individuals to choose who to play with.

The just world fallacy states that there is no such thing as a just world necessarily. I think for this sort of problem it is important to distill it down to the base parts. You can argue ad infinitum about what "justice" is and is not, and many philosophers have already for thousands of years. But I think there is a level that can be reached where a there is a general consensus of what is just and not just.

Take for example somebody who volunteers many hours at a cancer ward for children to help ease the suffering of the children by giving them toys, entertainment, and company. For this example take this assumption at face value as this person is a "good" person (as in no skeletons in their closet, no ulterior motive, etc.). If this person's child then was diagnosed with terminal cancer, does that seem just? Or "right"? Or something that "should" happen to this person? Our initial reaction is that this sort of thing is not fair and shouldn't happen to this "good" person.

That is the just world fallacy. That because you do good things, good things (or not bad things) should happen to you. And if you do bad things, bad things (or not good things) should happen to you. The reason that it is a fallacy is because it isn't true. Whether one volunteers at a cancer ward or not has no relationship to one's child developing cancer.

It is important to remember that this is not mutually exclusive. It does not mean that there is no justice (however one may define it). Most would say that if somebody does something "wrong" (again, that can be argued ad infinitum) and then they are punished for it in a way that is appropriate to the severity of what they did then that is justice. But it does NOT mean that justice does not exist.

I get it. But you just picked one behavior and individual and one result. If we rather take 1000 people who consistently behave nice and another 1000 who consistently behave like huge assholes, would not we expect the first group having overall, on the average better results, because they make friends and the second group makes enemies?

But there you go, that isn't the universe rewarding good or punishing bad. Behaving nicely will lead to more friends, which are two related things. The just world fallacy is more about "this group is a jerk to everybody, so most of them should get cancer" (sorry I keep using the cancer example, it is just easy). Which isn't true.

I don't think we can rightly say one way or the other. There are examples for, and counter-examples against, justness being correlated with success. As well as a basic problem with how we gauge the just or morally good.

For example, we can look to the Roman empire and see that they were unjust by how they consistently set out on wars of conquest. They were by and large imperialistic, yet as a result of this the states they annexed were introduced into the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace. Did this have an overall positive or negative effect? Was the peace brought forth from Roman rule worth the countless wars that they waged?

Alexander the Great is another example. Was he a unifier and builder of civilization and culture, or was he an oppressive warlord subjecting innocents to his rule?

In the end I think we can say that this all depends on what we consider just and good, and even then these things have to be looked at through the context of time. There's really no clear answer to this question unless we really define what's "morally good".

"There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena."

Similar to what MCRayDoggyDogg said, a just or unjust world is a label we apply. It is not an intrinsic value within any entity or action. The correlation based on morality and an action will only benefit the individual based on context. There isn't some kind of moral magnet that is attracted to success or survival.

Not only that, but the systems, and indvidual units in that system, that nations and societies have are way too interconnected to really determine the morality of an action. Any wide ranging policy that is set by either of them will both help and harm members.

I've never encountered anyone arguing from the just world fallacy as a philosophical position. It's more an implicit assumption that people seem to be employing, even though they'd never profess to it explicitly. For example, people arguing that a rape victim brought it on herself by dressing a certain way are probably committing this fallacy - since what they're saying revolves around the assumption that bad things don't happen to innocent people, even if that's not a position they'd take if pressed to state their beliefs.

All value systems, moral or otherwise, are at some level dictated by society. The definitions of 'Good' and 'Bad' are entirely dependent on what society is being used as the frame of reference. Furthermore, moral value within society functions similarly to economic value. When society enjoys it, it becomes 'good', and when society begins to dislike something, it becomes 'bad'. For example: The US has recently realized that fast-food is nutritionally bad and, as a result, fatness is becoming 'bad' and working out is becoming 'good'. In Nazi Germany, propaganda was able to convince the people that what they were doing was best for society, so it became 'good'. When that society was reintroduced to Western (Allied) society, what they had done was immediately regarded as the ultimate 'evil' because it had been the greatest threat to Allied society.

Societies are always just and good because they get to define those terms. They only become unjust or bad when looked at from other societies.

The nations that the larger European empires conquered weren't exactly shining beacons of morality. If roles were reversed I can't imagine it being any less brutal. The strong will always suppress the weak, if it serves to make them stronger.